Devices used in medical examinations are increasingly distinguished by substantially high accuracy and good quality of images. To provide substantially high-resolution images and optional image quality, an accurate location of a region of a patient to be examined, and hence of the patient, needs to meet increasingly stringent demands or requirements. There is, accordingly, a need for providing a suitable apparatus and a method by which a substantially accurate position of the patient during the medical examinations is determined.
In known medical systems, tabletops on which the patients are supported during the examinations are typically built or manufactured to be quite rigid, in order to minimize deformation and hence changes in the position of the patient. A disadvantageous aspect of this tabletop rigidity, however, is that deformations cannot be precluded in every case, which is unappreciatively imprecise because of the increased demands made of the images. Moreover, tabletops that are substantially hard or thick are a hindrance when making images.
Further, a sagging of the tabletop caused by the patient's weight may need to be determined to adjust the making of images or to adapt the images accordingly. Typically, this sagging of the tabletop was determined by weighing the patient and by constant and repeated measurements of the patient's location during the imaging process. However, this patient weighting and repetitive location measurements can be quite complicated and impractical.